


Pistachio

by SneakyBunyip



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Aftermath - Chuck Wendig, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: A happy ending for Armitage Hux, Gen, Hux lives, I'm grieving dont look at me, M/M, Rise of Skywalker Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:14:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21907324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SneakyBunyip/pseuds/SneakyBunyip
Summary: Listen...Rise of Skywalker was an emotional rollercoaster and I love Hux too much for it to just end like that. So if you're like me and love Armitage and think he deserves better, please stay awhile and listen.
Relationships: Alexsandr Kallus/Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios, Armitage Hux & Rae Sloane
Comments: 27
Kudos: 112





	Pistachio

Clinging to the underbelly of the Star Destroyer, the aptly named junker ship,  _ Barnacle,  _ waited for the “package” to arrive.

“See him yet?” Zeb asked, leaning on the gurney below the hatch just a few feet away. 

“The sensor broke in his chest plate an hour ago...so if the First Order is anything like the Empire-ah, there we are.”

The body bag shot out of an airlock a hundred klicks from their position.

The  _ Barnacle  _ disengaged, using the momentum to float towards the bag.

“You got two minutes before he gets deader, Alex,” Zeb reminded him, climbing the ladder leading to the hatch.

“I am well aware of how space works, Garazeb.”

He heard Zeb snort...and it made him smile.

The mechanical arms of the  _ Barnacle  _ extended carefully, plucking the bag and inserting it into the ship's “maw” where Zeb waited. A few minutes later Zeb had plopped the body bag onto the gurney and wheeled it into the cramped space of the medbay

“Package secure. Take us out, darlin’.”

The  _ Barnacle _ was little more than a glitch on the  _ Steadfast _ radar as they jumped to hyperspace leaving the First Order Fleet behind. 

“Take command would you, love?” Kallus rose from the chair, several of his joints popping, reminding him that he had left this life behind for a reason. 

Zeb crowded the exit to the cockpit, his large green eyes blinking slowly. “Hey, you alright?”

“You mean to ask if I am alright rescuing a traitor to the First Order who also happened to kill many of our friends on Hosnian Prime or if I am alright sitting beneath a bloody Star Destroyer for two hours fighting feelings of nostalgia and terror with every klick we traveled?”

Zeb frowned. “Yeah. That.”

“I’m fine, Zeb. I promise.” 

Neither of them believed it, but there was nothing else to say of it. 

He squeezed past Zeb, but not before giving him a reassuring pat on his purple and gray patched cheek. 

“Are we doin’ the right thing?” Zeb called after him. 

“Perhaps not by this new Resistance's standards, but we are doing this for a friend that helped protect our home."

"Yeah...well...never been one for standards..." Zeb shrugged.

"That makes one of us," Kallus sighed, and entered the medbay.

\-----

Adrenaline shot through Armitage Hux’s system, kickstarting his heart, flooding his veins with fire, jolting him back to life with a strangled cry. 

He could still hear the shot from the blaster; s till see Pryde’s smug smile as he fell; s till feel the body armor splinter, crack and burn against his chest to look like a fatal wound. A

rmitage threw his hands out in front of him two hours too late, and he found himself staring not at an enemy…

...but not at a friend, either.

The human standing in front of him was tall, wide-jawed with sandy-hair and beared peppered with gray. He wore the tan jacket that looked as if it was pulled from the Empire's Most Wanted posters, but there was no denying the way he carried himself. He was a former Imperial, and that dominating presence never went away. “Agent Kallus.”

Kallus folded his arms. “It’s just Alex now, Armitage.”

Hux's lip curled in distaste. “It is still General to you.”

“Is it now? My apologies, I must have pulled the wrong traitor out of space, then.”

A large lasat popped in. "Kid's awake, huh?"

Hux only knew Garazeb Orellios from cautionary tales that came in the form of lectures from his father. In person, the lasat was an imposing figure that was much too large to be standing in the medbay as a third party. Garazeb didn't seem to mind this and he bent down, crowding Hux's space to examine the still smoldering wound on Hux's chest.

“Karabast, that looks rough,” He ignored Hux’s disgusted scoff and lifted a clawed finger to the scorched tunic, gently pulling it back to see the broken chest armor that Hux had cryptically received just before he joined Pryde on the bridge. 'Wear this and live.' Was all it said.

He had assumed it was from the Resistance fighters he saved.

He was sorely mistaken.

“Looks nasty, but that's the whole point of it. Designed it myself just before we had our contacts sneak it aboard."

The claw touched one of the plates and Hux hissed in pain. “Careful, you-”

The sharp glare from Kallus stayed Hux's tongue. 

“It...still hurts.”

“A bacta bath will be prepped shortly,” Kallus nodded to Zeb and the two of them rose to leave. 

“Wait,” Armitage called, wincing. “What _is_ all this? Why did you warn me? Why did the Resistance go to all this trouble to save me, of all people?”

Kallus paused. “The Resistance is unaware of this rescue, Armitage. Trust when I say if they knew where their information was coming from, they never would have accepted it.”

“Then why?”

“Because I asked them to,” said an achingly familiar voice behind him.

Hux's eyes widened, then immediately dropped to his hands in his lap.

“I trust this makes us even?” Kallus asked the newcomer.

“Very much so. Thank you for this.”

“Thank you for protecting Zeb and my world,” Kallus replied, and spoke something in a language Hux did not understand. Then to Hux he said: “This is a second chance seldom in your position ever receive, or deserve, Armitage Hux. Do not waste it.”

“Hello, Armitage…” 

He ignored the knot in his throat. “Sloane.”

Former Grand Admiral of the Once Glorious Empire, Rae Sloane, sat on the edge of the Former First Order General’s bed. 

She still wore white.

It was a cotton shirt, black gloves and a black vest, but she wore it as proudly as she had her uniform. 

“So you did join the Resistance, after all.” Hux said, sourly.

“I joined the fight against the First Order,” Sloane corrected.

“It’s the same thing,” he spat.

“Is it? Are you now a Resistance Fighter, too? A spy for the rebel scum?”

“I had no choice.” Hux spat. “Ren took  _ everything _ from me.”

“As did Gallius Rax from me when the Empire breathed its last. As do all who wield power for the sake of having it, not for the sake of those affected by it.”

He said nothing.

“Armitage, look at me.”

He felt like a petulant child, but he shook his head all the same, locks of red hair falling over his forehead. His smart uniform was charred and frosted. His body shook with pain. His eyes blurred with tears of frustration. There was no more dignity left in him.

“You left me.”

A hand touched his gloved fist. The sight of it fractured something inside Hux’s cooled heart, and a memory surfaced of a younger version of that hand: a hand squeezing Brendol Hux’s neck, a hand that showed a young Armitage that his father was not as invincible as he once believed. 

And it was that important lesson that earned Hux his place in the galaxy. For a time, anyway. 

“I am so sorry, son,” she said, softly. “I wanted to take you with me. I truly did.”

“It was too late for me. I never would have left,” he sniffed.

"My boy, it is never too late."

Hux lifted his eyes.

And was greeted by a warm smile.

Sloane had aged gently. Her sharp cheekbones, and gracefully arching brow still carried their edge, but being decades removed from the Empire had removed the hardened shell from her sienna eyes. The white bolt through her dark hair had spread like lightning since last he saw her.  There were more wrinkles around her eyes, a few more scars on her cheeks and neck.

Some absurd part of him wished  to hug her. 

The feeling subsided immediately. 

It always did.

“I’m proud of you,” she said, though he snorted a laugh before she could finish her sentence.

“Don’t you dare,” he snarled. “Nothing I have done warrants your pride. I am a failed general in a dying military power being overrun by an overgrown child that destroyed everything I sacrificed a lifetime for. What could you possibly be proud of?”

Rae squeezed his hand. Hard. So hard it almost hurt. 

“You. Are. Alive. You survived it. You are on the _other side_ of it. You are  _ free _ of it.”

Hux growled quietly, tugging half-heartedly from her grasp. 

Her grip tightened. 

“We have survived, Armitage, because that’s what people like us do.”

"People like us..." Hux said, dryly. "Survivors of two broken empires? Traitors and turncoats? Cowards?"

"Cowards? Please...if we were cowards, I would be at the high table following orders and you would be cowtowing to Pryde. What you did today was brave, Armitage."

There was no strength in Hux to argue the opinions of his mentor, so he let the matter go. "So, here we are again, us against the galaxy. What happens next?"

“Alexsandr and Garazeb drop us off at my ship, _the_ _Happenstance_ and from there, anywhere we like.”

"Anywhere we like..." The words felt hollow. The words sounded hollow.

"It's a big galaxy, Armitage. And you have never seen any of it without the weight of that tunic."

Armitage's fingers went to the clasp of his tunic, the one that always was just a bit too tight around the neck, a bit too possessive of his shoulders, that held his body captive rather than let it breathe free.

He ripped the damned thing off, ignoring the bolts of pain shooting through his chest. The fabric came away easy from his narrow shoulders, freckled and overburdened. He threw the tunic to the ground, two black gloves following with it and no sooner did the air conditioned breeze touch his cold skin, did two warm hands come around to drape a dark brown leather jacket around them. It smelt of burnt leather, ozone, and adventure. 

_ How annoying. _

“I will...follow your lead, then” Armitage said, slipping his arms into the jacket, eyeing a "Nexu Express" logo on the lapel.

Rae laughed. An honest, musical laugh.

He had forgotten that laugh…

...he had forgotten how to laugh with someone else. 

He ventured a smile, but it felt unnatural and he ceased immediately.

“When have you ever followed my lead, son?”

Armitage shrugged and brushed the hair back from his face. “I suppose the day I turned traitor to the ruling power that shaped me. Everyone must start somewhere.”

"First things first,” Rae said, a twinkle in her eye. “I am taking you out for ice cream on Nantoon. Let's see if we can get a little color in those cheeks and a bit of weight on those bones.”

Armitage scoffed. "That's ridiculous."

"Sorry, but that's the rule. Traitors get ice cream. It's in the handbook."

"I would like a copy of said handbook."

"The second rule is: Traitors do not get handbooks."

Armitage laughed, a weak, tired sound, but it felt better. It felt like home.

Four hours later he was sitting in the middle of a filthy, battle-torn cantina, an anonymous face amongst a sea of anonymous faces facing down a table full of different flavors of ice cream.

“Have at it, kiddo,” Rae grinned, resting her chin on her palm. “You’ve earned it.”

Armitage Hux’s first taste of ice cream came in the form of Pistachio.

And twelve flavors later…

...Pistachio was still his favorite.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on Tumblr! [SneakyBunyip](http://sneakybunyip.tumblr.com/)  
> 


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